The Brush Off
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: The wrong pen but the right idea.


Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.

My thanks to Owl and Cheri, who had to put up with much more than this recently.

**Author's Note: **In "Killer B's" (episode eight of the first season) Hardcastle talks Buddy Ebsen into taking a role in a C-minus feature from the studio of Eddie Sands. Sands is a wholesale drug dealer using movie-making as a cover for his smuggling operation. The judge and Mark finagle their way onto the set as part of Ebsen's "entourage". Mark makes friends with Eddie's ingénue girlfriend, Crystal Dawn (aka Sally Blanchard), and parlays that into a meeting with Sands himself. He's offered a job driving one of Sands' drug loads up from Mexico. With Hardcastle as aerial back-up, Mark leads the fuzz to the spot where Sands and his distributors are meeting. In the epilogue, Mark, Crystal, the judge, and Ebsen are out on the town at a swank restaurant. A man leans over the back of the booth and greets Mark enthusiastically. Mark seems to think it's a fan from his racing days. No such luck—the man gives his name—Charlie Crenshaw—and tells him they were in the same cellblock in Joliet Prison.

**The Brush-Off**

by L.M. Lewis

The party broke up relatively early. It might have been partly the awkwardness after Mark's little encounter with a forgotten acquaintance. Crystal—who was now officially Sally Blanchard again—said she had an early appointment the next morning. She didn't go into any specifics and she also didn't take Mark up on his offer of a ride home.

So he and the judge were back at the estate by nine, with Mark heading straight to the gatehouse to, as he put it, "get out of the monkey suit." It was too dark to do anything useful around the property, so after he'd shed his duds for a ratty pair of jeans and a t-shirt, he strolled back over to the main house, thinking ice cream.

He went around back, let himself in, and rustled up a bowl and some strawberry ripple. He contemplated eating it in the kitchen, but decided it might be more entertaining to see what Hardcastle was up to.

He wandered down the hallway, barefoot and unintentionally silent, and pulled up in the doorway of the den with a cheery, "Hiya, Judge."

He got more reaction than he'd expected. The man jumped slightly and looked both startled and cross. He closed the file that he'd been apparently studying and grumbled, "You over here eating again? Didn'tcha just finish dinner?"

"Yeah, but nobody told me _nouvelle cuisine_ was French for 'tiny portions'. Geez, even the potatoes were small."

He gave up leaning on the jamb and came in, making himself at home in the chair opposite the desk. "Whatcha doing? That our next case?" He pointed at the file with his spoon. "What is it? Lemme guess—the mule ride over at the Grand Canyon is secretly being used to smuggle—"

He paused suddenly, staring at the jacket of the file Hardcastle had been perusing.

"_Hey_," he looked up at the judge sharply, "that's _my_ file."

"Hmm?" the judge replied glancing down as though he'd just noticed it. The effect was almost comical.

Mark raised one eyebrow. "I'da thought you'd have had that memorized by now. Maybe you were thinking you missed something?" He sat back, the spoon rattling momentarily as he dropped it in the bowl. His grin became a sudden guffaw and then he slapped his knee with his free hand.

"You're trying to figure out how you missed the part about Joliet, huh? _Hah._ He was pretty good, wasn't he?"

"Who was?" Hardcastle said grumpily.

"Charlie Crenshaw, that's who. My old buddy from 'Joliet'."

"So when the hell _were_ you there?" Hardcastle asked in exasperation, whacking the folder. "You didn't have enough time to squeeze in another sentence."

"Sorry, Hardcase," Mark said, without one iota of contrition, "I've never even been to Illinois. Wait," he halted and frowned, "I was in St. Louis once, just overnight."

"St. Louis is in Missouri. _East_ St. Louis is in Illinois."

Mark looked vaguely relieved. "Okay, then, no—I've never been in Illinois."

"So what was all that fandango about you and him and a cell block in Joliet?"

"He was pretty good, wasn't he?" Mark grinned. "I mean, you believed him enough to take another look at my file. Hell, that _is_ good."

Hardcastle said nothing, but his frown had become a lot tenser. Mark took the hint and sighed.

"Okay, well, Charlie is an old buddy of mine—a guy I knew before San Quentin. Strykersville—you remember that one, right?" He nodded toward his file, as though the judge might've forgotten their last visit to that facility only a few weeks earlier when Hardcastle's nemesis, J.J. Beale had escaped from there.

"I spent, ah, a little over a year in minimum security there. Never got to know the warden's wife, though," he added, not sounding all that disappointed.

"Yeah," the judge groused, "so what's all that got to do with Joliet?"

"Not a thing." Mark smiled. "That part must've been Charlie's idea. He's a big fan of the movie, ya know."

"_What_ movie?"

Mark looked at him in disbelief. "_The Blues Brothers._ They filmed some of it in Joliet Prison. Anyway, you gotta admit Joliet sounds a whole lot cooler than 'Strykersville', right? I mean, what's the point of tossing out the name of a prison, and then having to explain to everybody that it _is_ a prison. Though," Mark knitted his brows momentarily, "if he'd told me he was going to _improvise_, I think I would have suggested San Quentin. It's got about the same wattage as Joliet and it's a lot more believable."

"'Cause it's true, for one thing," Hardcastle pointed out, with just a hint of acidity. "So you and ol' Charlie planned that whole thing, huh? And there I was feeling sorry for you—"

"_Hah_," Mark waggled a finger, "uh-uh, you were laughing your ass off. Don't try and deny it."

"Okay, well, for a little while, maybe, "Hardcastle admitted. "It was pretty funny, you gotta admit. You reaching for the pen and . . .." He frowned. "I think there's a pun in there somewhere."

"Don't look for it too hard," Mark warned him.

"So," Hardcastle pushed the closed file away, "you and Charlie set it up."

"Yup." Mark smiled contentedly.

"But you ended up with egg on your face . . . not to mention Crystal—I mean Ms. Blanchard—didn't look all that happy."

"Nope." An element of satisfaction accompanied the contentment.

"You did it to tick her off?" There was obvious disbelief in Hardcastle's tone. "She's got the blond hair, the cobalt blue eyes."

"Yeah, but . . . Judge, think about it. She wanders into town and hooks up with the first sleaze-bag who shows her a good time. He puts her to work 'acting'—ugh, you saw those takes; she was terrible. She _knew_ she was no good at it. But she stuck around. _Why_? Hell, all she needed was a bus ticket back to where she came from. Let's face it, she didn't have much spine."

"I thought you were more of a leg man. Now it's backbone, huh?"

Mark shrugged. "Well, it was kind of a double-duty thing, too, that scene with Crenshaw. They all find out sooner or later—the ex-con part of my resume. It's hard to work it into conversation but I always feel like I haven't been honest if I don't. This way was a helluva lot more entertaining, don'tcha think?" He wagged his eyebrows up and down once.

Hardcastle shrugged. "Fancy restaurant, mood music, nice bottle of champagne—and a couple of stand-up comedians."

"Uh-huh." Mark looked down at the remains of his ice cream, now mostly melted. He sighed and after a moment added pensively, "Legs, some backbone, and a brain. Is that too much to ask? Yeah, probably . . . for me, anyway."

"Keep looking. You never know."

Mark nodded once as he stood. He cast one sideward glance at his file, now sitting well off to the side. The nod segued into a quick shake of his head and a mischievous smile. He spoke half to himself as he turned and left the room. "Joliet. _Hah_ . . . we gotcha."


End file.
